Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell continues from here
AG: “The nakedness of woman is the work of God” – (That’s a kind of nice thing to say) –
“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.” There still is this centralized theistic deistic notion here, though. He still hasn’t escaped from heaven. He still hasn’t escaped from heaven. This must have been some old ones that he had, written down.
Peter Orlovsky: How do you get that out the nakedness of woman?
AG: He’s talking about God.
Peter Orlovsky: Oh, I see.
AG: He needs a God to justify it.
Peter Orlovsky: Oh.
AG: He still a needs a God. He isn’t devilish enough to enjoy it without a God.
Peter Orlovsky: What does God mean to him here?
AG: Who knows? Who knows? That’s what I’m just asking. That’s the question.
Peter Orlovsky: Oh.
AG: I’m just saying, he hasn’t escaped the theism. I’m guessing these might have been four lines that he once wrote in his old notebook and he thought they were pretty good so he included them here. Yeah?
Student: Do you think there might be a correlation between air, water, fire, and earth?
AG: Between what?
Student: Air, water, fire, and earth.
AG: Well, in The Four Zoas there’s a correlation, yes. It’s all on that page I gave you (from) the Blake Dictionary that will show it up, too. I’ve forgotten which it is now. If anybody’s got the (Blake) Dictionary, they can look it up. Well, I’ve got (it) here probably somewhere.
I got it. Well, I got that much. Water – the body is water, Urizen air – imagination is air, Luvah, emotions, is fire, Urthona is earth.
But, I don’t know if these would relate to this particular set-up. One could examine it. I just noticed there are four. They do correspond a little to the Hebrew and they do correspond to his own four-fold system but I was just pointing that out. Pointing out that there is a God in there, too.
Student: (This is in) The Four Zoas?
AG: Pardon me?
Peter Orlovsky: What, (so) the body is born of Imagination?
Student: The Four Zoas?
AG: Pardon me? – Four Zoas? You have that Four Zoas sheet.
Student: No.
AG: “Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.” – Does that make any sense? “Excess of sorrow..” – in other words, you get so far down into sorrow that finally you’re laughing at the futility, or the empty futility, of existence, or the humorous futility of it.
Peter Orlovsky: That’s true of my mother.
AG: Yeah. And “excess of joy” – it’s so beautiful you start crying that it could be true.
Student: Sometimes, quite often people cry at weddings and sometimes they laugh at funerals.
AG: Yeah. It’s so fine. The sorrow is so fine there’s nothing but to be released from it and laugh. Like “the cut worm forgives the plow” – “Excess of sorrow” forgives and laughs, finally. It’s so inevitable you can’t begin to… well, you might be laughing at your own prior resentments, if nothing else, or the notion of a whole world trapped in the illusion of resentment at the moment of death when you escape both resentment and the causes, you might wind up laughing at everybody. You’d see a whole circus universe of people stuck.
“The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword. are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. – (That’s a little bit (like) that line in The French Revolution when Orleans says, go travel around the circuit of a man’s brain and then come back and write laws if you’re so smart. Remember that speech? Was it the Abbe (de Sieyes)? (It was) Orleans speech, I think, related to that).
to be continued